1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus and an ink cartridge. More particularly, the present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus which prints in various color of inks and an ink cartridge therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to a conventional ink jet printing apparatus, an ink cartridge for supplying ink to the main body side of the ink jet printing apparatus is detachably mounted on a carriage, which has an ink jet print head. As one of the conventional ink jet printing apparatus, there has been known a so-called color ink jet printing apparatus which can print in various color ink.
Colors conventionally used for the color ink may include, for example, four colors consisting of black, cyan, magenta and yellow. An example of configuring the ink cartridge for ink of these four colors uses four separate ink cartridges each of which stores ink of one of the four colors. An IC chip, which contains and holds information on the ink stored in each ink cartridge, is provided on each of the conventional ink cartridges. The information on the ink includes information relating to an existence of ink cartridge, the color of ink accommodated therein, the remaining amount of ink, the type or model of ink and so on.
In this case, the ink jet printing apparatus is provided with an information reading-out section on a position facing the IC chip of the respective ink cartridge. The printing apparatus reads out information on ink from the IC chip through the reading-out section. In the ink jet printing apparatus which is equipped with four (4) separate cartridges, each of four (4) separate information reading-out sections is provided on a position corresponding to the respective one of the four separate IC chips. Based on information read out from the IC chip through the information reading-out section, the ink jet printing apparatus performs, for example, appropriate printing with ink of various colors.
On the other hand, there has been another example of the conventional ink cartridge such as a single, integrated ink cartridge which has four separate chambers. The IC chip for the integrated ink cartridge is different from that for the separate-type ink cartridge for each color. Moreover, since the information reading-out section of the carriage reads out information on ink from the IC chip of the integrated ink cartridge, structure of the information reading-out section in the carriage is also different from that of the information reading-out section in the carriage which is equipped with the separate ink cartridges.
Therefore, if the integrated ink cartridge is used for the printing apparatus having the carriage designed for mounting the separate ink cartridges, the hardware structure of the carriage needs modifying.
However, it is inconvenient to replace the carriage itself. Especially, the carriage connects to the body of the printing apparatus mechanically and electrically, and is usually adjusted with high positional accuracy with respect to the printing apparatus body and the ink cartridge in particular the electrical contact members of the IC chip, so that an extremely high printing quality can be realized. Therefore, it is very difficult for a user of the printing apparatus to replace the carriage.